Mapping Contest: Final standings

Some people already might have guessed this due to our last newspost: a final cup for the top 3 of the Mapping Contest will be skipped. There isn’t enough time left for a decent cup before Season 6 starts, and we want to give the best maps the opportunity to be a part of that.

The results of the public polls will count as final standing. About 600 users rated the top 5; in the end it was a pretty close result between the first and second place, but cp_gullywash made it with a total rating of 6.53! The map made by Vale’Arnold is the official winner of our contest and will be included to Season 6 map pool, as well as being part of the 5^th Cup final.

But also the second (cp_yukon) and third (cp_waste) place will get their chance to be part of the biggest TF2 tournament ever played. Again it’s up to the community: Should these two maps be added to the official map pool and be included to our upcoming events? Vote below!

Final standings

• cp_gullywash by Arnold [latest version]
• cp_yukon by MangyCarface [included into TF2]
• cp_waste by Icarus [latest version]
• 4th – cp_outlaw by jasska
• 5th – cp_afterdusk by ForgottenCake
• 6-12th – cp_generator, cp_trainstation, cp_fool_hill, cp_energy, cp_follower, cp_greenvalley, cp_resonance

Season 6: Status + polls

The first days of the sign up period went amazing. With over 250 teams registering in the first 90 minutes, our internal record was broken again. In the meanwhile almost 400 teams signed up! We would like to thank the whole community for their trust and positive feedback to this project :)

Slot limit

As we had a slot limit of 250 teams in Season 5, of course many teams worry about their spot in Season 6. Happily we can already announce the slot limit of Season 6 will be raised up again! A final slot limit will be decided on Thursday. If your team wants to take part in Season 6 and haven’t signed up yet, please be sure to do so by Thursday!

Weapon Unlocks

Another big discussion point is the weapon unlocks. After gathering community’s opinion we decided to allow all new Spy and Sniper weapons. The Force-A-Nature will get another final poll to decide whether it should be banned completely or if it’s allowed with a limit of 1.

Rule 1.5.5

Due to some requests we also created a poll about the jump rule on cp_well – should we keep this rule like in recent seasons or remove it like its standard in the US? Give your opinion below.
Note: This won’t effect rule 1.5.6.

1.5.5 cp_well: It’s not allowed to jump over the train until countdown reaches 5 seconds

It’s forbidden to jump over the trains to opponent’s side during the “Installation Time” until Countdown reaches 5 seconds. Jumping on the trains and spamming over is allowed whole time.

Schedule

Season 6 of the ETF2L league is on the horizon. Sign-ups will open this evening at exactly 20:00 CEST with the league scheduled to start three weeks from now. See below for the complete schedule!

• TODAY, 20:00 CEST – Sign Ups OPEN
• 13th of September, 23:59 CEST – Sign Ups close
  
• 18th of September – Announcement of provisional divisions
• 21st of September – Announcement of final divisions
• 22nd to 27th of September – Map Pick phase
• 28th of September – 1st Match week
• ~ 6th of December – General Match Deadline

Map Pool

For season 6, we have somewhat changed the structure of our map pool. Most players will remember the structure of the primary and secondary map pool. That is no more, we now have 1 map pool for everyone. This map pool contains 8 maps. During the map pick phase (see schedule above), you can choose one map to play against each opponent in your division, the opponent will choose the other. The only limitation here is that you can only choose a certain map twice in this competition, this was three times in previous seasons.

The results from our recently-held custom map vote indicate that cp_gullywash came out on top. It had an average grade of 6.53 This was just marginally more than cp_yukon, which scored a 6.48. Other contestants were cp_waste (5.52), cp_outlaw (4.01) and cp_afterdusk (3.33). Based on these results cp_gullywash has been added to the season 6 map pool.

The map pool for season 6 is:

• cp_badlands
• cp_fastlane
• cp_freight (not cp_freight_final)
• cp_granary
• cp_gravelpit
• cp_gullywash
• cp_well
• ctf_turbine

Sign-ups

In order to sign up, you will have to meet the following requirements:

• Have at least 6 players entered into your 6v6 team.
• Have at least 2 different contact methods entered on your team profile.
• Important: On sign-up, please indicate the division you think is suitable for your team.  You can enter this on the sign-up page.
• Only a team leader/deputy can access the sign-up page.

-> [Sign-up page] <-

Once signed up you will be put on the waiting list until your participation is verified by an admin. All verified teams will appear on this page: [Link]

Division Seedings

Please note: Once we have released our provisional divisions, every team that thinks they have been misplaced has the right to appeal their placement. Please collect screenshots of good results you’ve had if you plan on doing so. Exact details of the procedure will be announced in due time.

League Config: Update

Also our league config was updated for Season 6. All changes are listed on our [Rules page]. This config is to be used with immediate effect for every competition including the Nations Cup. Be sure to update your server as soon as possible!

-> [Updated Config] <-

Staff search

In order to start Season 6 with an adequate team, the ETF2L is once again looking for new league admins to strengthen our staff. If you are interested in working for the biggest Team Fortress 2 league worldwide, have a read below!

Admins

The work of a league admin consists of three seperate parts:

• verifying results from played matches
• helping out people on IRC with various requests
• taking part in discussions with our admin team about new competitions, rules, match issues and more

Being a league admin means having some free hours every week and have the will to commit to the work. Also a regular use of IRC is required!

Anti Cheat Admins

In addition to this, we are in need of experienced people for anti-cheat issues. If you have a good knowledge of how cheating cases should be handled and analyzed, you are more than welcome to apply.

Forum Moderators

Last but not least we are searching for forum moderators. Do you regularly visit our forum and like to browse through active threads? Are you a responsible guy and probably already have experience on moderating forums? Help us out and write an application!

Applications

If you are interested in joining our team send an email to deneusbeer@etf2l.org with the following details:

• ETF2L Nickname
• Real name, age and nationality
• Spoken languages (average english required)
• Past admin experience
• Motivation: why do you want to join our team?

Please have your application sent before the 13th of September. You can expect a response from us in the week after that.

Soldier 1on1 Turris Cup: Insanus Exfanus wins the title!

The second fun cup of this summer, the Soldier 1on1 Turris Cup, is finished aswell! In the final Insanus Exfanus from Division 1 team FakkelBrigade dominated his opponent  Pingu and won by a clear 3:0 streak. Congratulations!

The competition was archived and can be found in the [Hall of Fame].

SteelSeries introduced today the new SteelSeries Zboard™ Limited Edition Aion™ Keyset and SteelSeries QcK Limited Edition Aion™ Asmodian Mousepad. Co-designed with NCsoft® Corporation, Aion’s publisher and developer, the limited edition gear provides customized functionality and original artwork from the game that allows players to battle and quest with ease into Aion’s breathtaking world of Atreia.

Aion, the most anticipated MMO of 2009, is a visually stunning massively multiplayer online RPG where players fight in an epic celestial war between twin races of winged beings. Aion has received numerous international industry awards and will be available in stores this September in North America, Europe and Australia.

“The popularity of Aion internationally was so impressive that when the opportunity arose to partner with NCsoft to create branded products for the release of Aion in several of the largest western territories, we were thrilled,” said Bruce Hawver, CEO of SteelSeries. “The limited edition gear is designed for Aion players to customize their experience and help improve their game.”

The SteelSeries Zboard Limited Edition Aion Keyset will offer the full breadth of in-game commands on color-coded keys across the board. The keyset also provides players with:

• Dedicated action keys, menus, and chat commands that are labeled across 69 keys
• Full customization of each key through the SteelSeries Z Engine
• Quick-access emote keys for greeting, intimidating, or taunting your opponents

The SteelSeries QcK Limited Edition Aion Asmodian Mousepad features a high -quality cloth material that provides a precise, consistent glide and a specially designed non-slip rubber base, which prevents the pads from sliding on any surface. The SteelSeries QcK Mousepads have been thoroughly researched, designed and tested by professional players.

“SteelSeries has a reputation for designing high quality products that resonate with gamers. NCsoft believes that SteelSeries creates great gear that visually represents Aion and provides excellent tools for our players to have a great gaming experience,” said Chris Lee, Senior Global Brand Director for NCsoft in charge of Aion.

The SteelSeries Zboard Limited Edition Aion Keyset and SteelSeries Limited Edition QcK Aion Asmodian Mousepad will retail for $19.99 USD and $14.99USD.

Products are now available for pre-sale at Game Stop and Amazon.com. Pictures of all new products can be found at [FragYou.net], the official SteelSeries blog.

Nations cup start

After one week of sign-ups, the ETF2L nations cup is ready to start. 30 countries from all around Europe signed up for this event. The event will go as follows:

All teams will participate in the group stage, which will consist of six groups of four teams, and two groups of three. The groups with three teams will play matches of three maps, this way every team will play six maps total in the group phase. After everyone has played a match against the rest of his group, the best two of each group will continue to the playoff stage, which will be a single elimination tournament.

Seedings

To create balanced groups, and balanced play-offs, we have seeded the participants into three pots. A, B and C, based on their skill and past performance. Pot A has also been seeded 1 to 8, in order to try to make the play-offs more interesting. Each group stage group will consist of one team from Pot A, one from Pot B and two Pot C teams.

The seedings are as follows:

Pot A:

• 1. Finland
• 2. Sweden
• 3. England
• 4. Belgium
• 5. Germany
• 6. Russia
• 7. France
• 8. Norway

Pot B:

• Denmark
• Ireland
• Israel
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Ukraine

Pot C:

• Austria
• Belarus
• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Hungary
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Romania
• Scotland
• Switzerland
• Wales

These groups have been randomly seeded into divisions, which you can see here:

-> [Groups | Fixtures] <-

This means each team will have to play either two or three matches. The final deadline for these matches is 1st of October. This means 1 match per week, and 1 additional week for catchups.

Rules, maps and details

• [Rules]
• Maps Week 1 (1-7 September): cp_badlands, cp_gravelpit, (3rd map for Group A+B: cp_granary)
• Maps Week 2 (8-14 September): cp_granary, ctf_turbine, (3rd map for Group A+B: cp_fastlane)
• Maps Week 3 (15-21 September): cp_freight,  cp_well, (3rd map for Group A+B: cp_badlands)
• Unlocks: All unlocks allowed, for any class, except for the sandman.(A detailed post with our new rules and config will be released in a few days from today.)

Please start scheduling and playing your matches as soon as possible.

Public server update

As some of you have already noticed, our public server recently changed its IP address. Its physical location has remained the same. You can now find the server at the address pub.etf2l.org (or 213.163.72.214). Please update your favorites accordingly. The server status can always be seen on the widget in the rightmost sidebar.